Saturday, October 25, 2008

Obama's lead steady, McCain looking for a miracle

Unless modern polling is pretty much a garbage science (it's not), the election appears to be wrapping up with Obama in a commanding lead and McCain poised for a defeat that will pull many states out of the proverbial "red" column.

Here in Oregon Jeff Merkley is poised to wrestle away the seat of our excellent moderate Senator Gordon Smith. The campaign has been nasty and expensive and although Smith is well funded Merkley now has the help of national funding that will - in my opinion - give him the election, probably more on the basis of negative ads about Smith than platform issues.

Perhaps as importantly, the financial troubles of the country and perceived foreign policy failures of the Bush administration appear to be taking the country towards a House and Senate that are so strongly controlled by the Democrats many policies will face low levels of opposition.

This is likely to prove a mixed blessing unless the Democrats use this power with greater wisdom than either party has in the past. As the country and the world teeters on the brink of a potential depression the likes of which the world has not seen since the great Depression of the 1930s we can only hope that the new administration and congress will prove to be the most innovative and successful American political experiment of modern times. Anything short of that .... could be trouble.